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Ranga Mataire, Zimpapers Politics Hub
No one missed the gleeful undertone behind Bulawayo mayor, Mr David Coltart’s post on his X social media handle on May 4, 2024, at 8:24am when he warned that a South African Constitutional Court was likely to issue a judgement that would have ramifications on Zimbabwe’s land issue.
In his post, which could have been motivated by briefings from his contacts in South Africa, Mr Coltart, who once served in the Rhodesian army during the country’s liberation struggle, made it clear on whose side he was on the land issue.
The former Education Minister could not have anticipated the backlash he got when he announced that a judgement in South Africa’s ConCourt “could have major ramifications for the unresolved matter of compensating those farmers whose land was expropriated”.
It’s interesting to note that this was the first thing Mr Coltart posted on his X timeline that day, which implies that the issue is closest to his heart.
Unfortunately, things did not go according to Mr Coltart’s anticipation. On Monday May 6, 2024, the South African ConCourt dismissed a R2 billion claim brought against the South African government by 25 former Zimbabwe white farmers.
In their court papers, the white farmers claimed actions undertaken by former President Jacob Zuma when he sided with a Sadc Heads of State Summit to disband the Sadc Tribunal, which had ruled that the land reform programme in Zimbabwe was illegal were unconstitutional. The tribunal had ruled that former white farmers had to be compensated or have the farms returned to them.
This irked the Zimbabwean Government, which raised concern over other previous rulings that sought to nullify the revolutionary land reform programme launched by the Government at the turn of the millennium. The Heads of State thus agreed to disband the tribunal and agreed to a new protocol to reconstitute the tribunal.
The decision to disband the tribunal did not go down well in South Africa where a large contingent of former Zimbabwe white farmers are now resident, who in 2019, through the Law Society and other affected parties, took President Zuma, the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, and the Minister of International Relations and Co-operation to court, arguing that the South African government should not have been party to the disbanding of the tribunal.
In its ruling then, the South African High Court was scathing in its assessment of the former president’s actions and condemned him for being “party to denying of SA citizens and other Sadc countries access to justice at a regional level”.
Buoyed by this 2018 ruling, the former white commercial farmers then sought reprieve in the ConCourt whose judgement was delivered on Monday. Judges of the ConCourt unanimously ruled in favour of the South African government.
Delivering the decision, Judge Owen Rogers, said the farmers’ claims fell due by August 2014 when Zuma signed the 2014 Sadc Protocol and would have “prescribed” (expired) in 2017 under South Africa’s Prescription Act.
Judge Rogers’ ruling must have piqued Mr Coltart who had anticipated a favourable judgement that would have resulted in former white commercial farmers being compensated.
Readers may be interested to know that the former Zimbabwe white farmers have the backing of Afriforum, a white supremacist pressure group that has in the past called apartheid a “so-called historical injustice”.
It is the same grouping that Mr Coltart sees no problem in being identified with. The same group has previously led delegations to the United States to lobby government officials and warn investors about the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party’s proposed plan to expropriate land without compensation.
As a lawyer, Mr Coltart ought to know that the law is very clear on the irreversibility of the land reform programme.
Zimbabwe’s Constitution, under Chapter 16 (Section 295), only allows land compensation to indigenous Zimbabweans and those under Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements (Bippas). Former white farmers are “entitled to compensation from the State only for improvements that were on the land when it was acquired”.
In 2020, the Zimbabwe Government reached an agreement with some former white farmers to compensate them for improvements on the farms, but not for the land. And since then, the Government has been compensating farmers for such assets, starting with payments of US$42 million in 2016 to 43 farmers.
It would appear as if Mr Coltart is still wallowing in the dreamland of past privileges of thinking that the former white farmers could, through legal recourse in South Africa, either have the farms returned to them or wholesomely compensated.
On social media, Mr Coltart was berated for hankering on colonial amnesia — oblivious of the need for compensation to indigenes whose land was violently taken from them by the colonial British Empire.
A lawyer, Mr Rex Midzi, reminded Mr Coltart of how blacks were deprived of their land and dumped in arid lands.
Another X user, Dennis Mativenga posted a picture of how black people who resisted land conquests were killed by white colonialists.
Land was at the core of the liberation struggle. Thousands of people lost their lives. A compromise deal was reached at the Lancaster House Conference, which mandated the new majority government to leave white farmers on the land for at least 10 years and allow a system of willing buyer, willing seller. The policy yielded very little results as the majority of the land remained in the hands of white farmers, with just two percent of the population owning 70 percent of the arable land.
There was a lot of anxiety among blacks who felt hard done by the slow pace of the land redistribution exercise. In 1997, the Government listed 1 503 farms for acquisition. The clamour for land rose to a crescendo around 1998 when Svosve villagers in Mashonaland East went to occupy white owned farms. The Government was forced to relent to the demands of landless indigenous people and in 2000 embarked on the Fast Track Land Reform Programme, which resulted in the allocation of land to new farmers on over 4 500 farms making up 7,6 million hectares, 20 percent of the total land of the country.
More than 300 000 households have to date been resettled. This figure translates to about 1,5 million people given that each household has an average of five people.
The land reform has improved the social and economic standing of many people in the country and continues to do so as more people are taking agriculture as a business.
President Mnangagwa is on record saying the revolutionary land reform programme is irrevocable. According to the constitutional amendments of 2000, compensation to farmers would only be for improvements made on the farms “within a reasonable period”.
In accordance with the amended Constitution, Britain, the former colonial power, is the one supposed to pay for the acquired farmland.
Online Reporter